If our public servants do not feel their jobs are worth doing Wellington will not buzz. Despite great creative businesses, if a critical proportion of our people feel grey, Wellington will not continue to draw and produce the brilliant people who attract their own cutting edge kind. For Wellington to thrive the people working in government must feel excited about their work. They are investing in their personal futures, as well as ours.

I can play a part in that. I want to be a tireless advocate for a top flight public service within a National government. I want to make sure that the changes nearly everyone is hoping for do not throw out babies with the bathwater.

Our public service has been demonstrably ‘world’s best’ in sectors in the past and it can be again. In that respect what’s good for Wellington will be good for New Zealand .

See the article on ITQ for fisheries in this week’s Economist . It reports research establishing what our public servants theorised, then made into practical administration. Though it is not mentioned in the article, Wellington produced world’s best fisheries policy and legislation.

"For years economists and green groups such as Environmental Defense, in Washington, DC, have argued in favour of ITQs. Until now, individual fisheries have provided only anecdotal evidence of the system’s worth. But by lumping all of them together the new study, published this week in Science, is a powerful demonstration that it really works. It also helps to undermine the argument that ITQ fisheries do better only because they are more valuable in terms of their fish stocks to begin with…. The new data show that before their conversion, fisheries with ITQs were on exactly the same path to oblivion as those without"

The Law and Economics Association of New Zealand is holding a seminar on fisheries law on 13 October, presented by the Ministry’s top ecomomist. Non-members are usually welcome to these seminars.